The official death of the border adjustment tax removes the most controversial idea from the tax overhaul conversation and provides GOP lawmakers and stakeholder groups with room to message on aspects of the tax rewrite effort that have garnered less attention.

Republicans have said a tax code rewrite will be easier than the health care overhaul that continues to elude them. Whether or not that proves true, a few intraparty battles likely lay ahead on taxes.

The GOP is united around the goal of a tax code overhaul. Republican lawmakers used Tax Day on Tuesday to highlight their shared vision for cutting tax rates, simplifying the code and spurring economic growth.

President Trump has promised big tax cuts but as CQ Roll Call's tax editor Catalina Camia explains a tangled web of interests and Republican disunity in Congress could spoil efforts for the first major tax legislation in 30 years.

California Democrat Scott Peters, a former environmental lawyer, represents a majority Anglo district near the Mexican border town of Tijuana.

Texas Republican Will Hurd, a 39-year-old former CIA officer who’s nearly two decades younger that Peters, represents a majority Latino district a thousand miles to the east that spans 40 percent of America’s border with Mexico.

President Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with Ryan, right, as he arrives on stage while Vice President Mike Pence looks on, at the GOP retreat in Philadelphia. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Pool)

PHILADELPHIA — In a few short months, Donald Trump has shifted from a candidate who considered Speaker Paul D. Ryan a “very weak and ineffective leader” to a president who seems to be leaning on him to beef up his policy agenda.

A sign of that evolution came Thursday when Trump, speaking before congressional Republicans at their issues retreat here, embraced Ryan’s “border adjustment” proposal to tax U.S. imports instead of exports as a way to pay for his border wall.